Webley & Scott Rebel .177 cal Part I

[Dick Tracey]

Received the Rebel I ordered from AOA today.  First impressions were mixed.  The rifle looks nice and handles nice.  5.5 lbs 35.5" long and 13.5" LOP.  AOA did a nice job of double boxing the shipment and used the peanuts made of starch.  Webley just put the rifle in a plastic bag and in the box with a small piece of styrofoam. The styrofoam held the rear sight.





The rifle didn't have any 'made in' stamps on it.  The packing slip had one set of Chineese characters on it and rear sight has "Sharp" stamped on it.  It does have "F.A.C." on the barrel and on the box.  This the other side of the Big Pond thing but I think this is not the power limited version.





I installed the rear sight (no instructions) by unscrewing the height knob and removing the spring.  I then took a screw driver and carefully pried the top part of the sight off the base.  Then using a phillips screwdriver removed the small pointed screw from the base.  Then slid the base onto the dovetail untill the hole in the dovetail lined up with the screw hole in the base.  Carefully screwed the screw back into the basee and secured it to the dovetail.  then reassembled the sight.



The rifle only has the compression pump and bolt showing that are made of metal.  The rest is composite material.  The receiver reminds me of the IZH 60/61 in shape.  At the back of the receiver is the end of the bolt with a rubber button fixed to it.  and on the right side there is a lever.  when you push down on the lever the bolt releases and opens up allowing you to insert a pellet in the breach.  You then push the rubber button in to close the breach.  Looks like if you had a loading pen you could load this rifle with gloves on.





The safety is a cross bar type behind the trigger. EDIT-- Sorry I had this wrong.  Correct is Push on right side to fire and push on left side for safe.  The SAME as a 1377 pistol -- EDIT ignore the rest of this it is wrong.!!! Push it in on the right side and it blocks the trigger movement.  Push it in on the left side and is ready to fire.  The opposite of a 1377 pistol.

The rifle cocks itself when you make the first pump.  The rifle has a max of 8 pumps and it gets harder to pump each time.  I ran a string of 10 shoots through the chrony (more on that in part II) and my arm was tired.  That was 8 pumps times 10 shots = 80 pumps.  My arm was sore after that.  I have a Benji 397 and it pumps easier then the Rebel.  I have several .25 cal springers one of which is a Webley Patriot and it takes about the same energy to cock as it takes to make the 7th and 8th pump on the Rebel.  This is purely subjective on my part, some people my feel differently.  I am 67 years old and in pretty good shape. 



I also noticed that the compression tube started to warm up after the first couple of shots.  It stayed warm through the 8 pump string and the 4 pump string of 10 shots.  Also might note that the instructions tell you to put rifle on safety before pumping.  This is a good practice as I managed to pull the trigger while pumping and the rifle fires.  This is due to the fact that the first pump of air cocks the rifle.  The only reason to open the bolt is to load the rifle.  You definately don't want to load the rifle before pumping.  The instructions are very minimal but you should read them.

I am right handed but I made these shots to show trigger travel 1st is at rest and 2nd is pulled all the way.  The rifle fires in about the middle of that range.  The trigger has a good feel to it.  It is not excessively heavy but just about right. I figure about 2 - 3 lbs.  It has a trace of 2 stages but is creepy.  I seems to be wearing in a little and may improve with use. 





In part II I will show some chrony results and a breif accuracy test.